1. Looks like North Carolina has taken steps to downplay the athletic department’s role in getting bogus classes set up. Classic case of tail wagging the dog?

DeCourcy: Dan Kane of the Raleigh News & Observer dropped another stunning report on Sunday, this time revealing UNC faculty council chair Jan Boxill had asked three faculty members authoring a report regarding the school’s academic fraud scandal to rewrite a paragraph that originally had suggested at least part of the motivation for “aberrant” courses in the university’s African and Afro-American Studies department was to aid athletes.

“The worry is that this could further raise NCAA issues and that is not the intention,” Boxill wrote in her email.

At this point, it’s hard to establish what is the most stunning aspect of the university’s behavior on this issue: that there could be such wide-spread “aberrance” in a university department, more than 50 classes that were deemed questionable; that the university apparently would fear NCAA scrutiny more so than the diminishment of its academic reputation or that almost nothing that has been reported by the N&O has led to significant consequences on campus. A few people lost their jobs, but as the revelations build there has been an almost eerie silence.

2. Kyle Wiltjer transferred to Gonzaga from Kentucky and will become eligible in 2014-15. A lot of people are saying that’ll make him the next Kelly Olynyk. That sound right to you?

DeCourcy: A little more than a quarter-century ago, I was covering the Duquesne Dukes for The Pittsburgh Press when the program signed a recruit from Archbishop Alter High in Kettering, Ohio. It was mentioned in the release that it was the same high school that produced the Paxson brothers, Jim and John, who at that point were both in the NBA and were on the way to score more than 16,600 career points combined. So of course I included that in the story.

And then I saw the young man in question play. He was nothing like a Paxson. And why should he be? I went to the same high school as Cincinnati Reds reliever J.J. Hoover, and I can’t throw a 96-mph heater.

Merely putting on a Gonzaga uniform won’t make Wiltjer the next Olynyk any more than Sam Dower or Przemek Karnowski will be the next Olynyk this year. When Olynyk completed his freshman year at Gonzaga, he made the Canada senior national team and got serious minutes at the 2010 FIBA World Championships. After two years at Kentucky, Wiltjer played this summer with what Canada calls its “Development” team in the World University Games. Although Wiltjer was more highly recruited, Olynyk was a more advanced player.

Wiltjer has serious progress to make with his physique before we can even entertain what he might become as a player. He is 6-10 and is an excellent shooter. That’s where it stands now. He’s not as dreadful athletically as some perceive; his problems defensively are more related to that lack of strength and also to poor fundamentals.

Wiltjer can become a very good player for the Zags. But Olynyk was a first-team All-American and a lottery pick. That's a tough target for even elite prospects.

3. Victor Oladipo rose from complementary player to SN’s Player of the Year. Tell me about your top candidate for a breakout-type season.

DeCourcy: Why don’t we stay right there in Bloomington? As backup to Oladipo and Jordan Hulls last season, 6-7 Will Sheehey averaged 9.5 points and shot 48.6 percent from the field. He is a terrific athlete who can hit 3-point shots (28-of-81 as a junior). With the Hoosiers losing so much offense from last season’s Big Ten championship team, he should be capable of scoring in the mid-teens as a senior.

With last season’s Hoosiers, I admired the energy and intensity Sheehey brought to the squad but didn’t always love his shot selection, which seemed more like the work of a primary option. At least he won’t have to do any re-learning this winter. He will be a primary option now—perhaps the primary option—for a team looking to rebuild quickly after losing Oladipo and center Cody Zeller (two of the first four picks in the NBA draft) as well as senior starters Hulls and Christian Watford.

4. The Pac-12 wants to stage one of its basketball games in China as early as 2014-15. Sounds like a win-win for the league and the participating teams looking for additional exposure. Right?

DeCourcy: This is being positioned as a way to deepen educational ties between Pac-12 institutions and China, but it’s actually just another college athletics money-grab. Departments in the Pac-12 haven’t even had time to figure out how to spend all this TV money that’s flowing in from the league's new contracts, and now they need more?

Look, there’s not a better fringe benefit for Division I athletes than the summer foreign tour, such as the one UCLA took last summer to China. They get extra practice and competition, plus they visit a place an ordinary working person would save for years to be able to afford. It’s all transacted outside the typical school calendar so as to present as little disruption as possible to the athletes’ education.

How do you pull that off with a league game? Even if it’s one that’s scheduled during the Christmas holidays, you’re still asking two teams to jet all the way to China for just a few days. Remember, there are NCAA rules regarding how long a team can be in place before a scheduled basketball game.

With all the controversy about whether college athletes are commercially exploited resulting from the O’Bannon case, surely the Pac-12 doesn’t need to be adding one more item that could be used as evidence for the plaintiffs.

5. Rick Pitino is about 10 years from reaching 1,000 wins for his career. He’d be 70 at that time. Does he stick around that long?

DeCourcy: Well, I hope he sticks around that long. I want to say I doubt he’d still be coaching, but perhaps more with Pitino than with anyone else, he gets to do so much of what he wants to do that he doesn’t have to stop working to live an incredibly rich life.

For instance, the story he told to CBS’ Gary Parrish about taking his son, Ryan, and several friends to see Pitbull at the Hollywood Bowl. Coach P gets name-dropped from the stage, and Pitbull also wishes a public Happy Birthday to Ryan.

Pitino still loves to teach the game during the winters, and when he’s not on the floor he can take incredible trips, watch his racehorses, play the best golf courses, dine in the finest restaurants. There’s little that’s out of reach for him. He’d once talked about retiring by 2017, when he would be reaching age 65. He’s since backed off of that. Retire from this? Nobody hates recruiting that much.